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It’s unlikely most employers will stop paying for birth control after Donald Trump took steps to reverse the federal mandate for employers to cover it, benefits analysts say.
“For larger employers, there will likely be little impact,” Aon ’s J.D. Piro, who leads the health legal practice at the employee benefits consultancy, which works with some of the nation’s largest employers and health insurance companies, said. “For smaller employers, there might be an impact on employees who work for companies with religious or moral objections.”
The Trump administration Friday essentially made it easy for employers to refuse to provide birth control to their workers, issuing what it called “rules protecting conscience rights of all Americans.” An estimated 55 million women gained access to birth control and didn’t have to pay a co-payment thanks to the Obama administration and the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump administration move comes at the peak of open enrollment season when employers allow their workers to change or choose their health benefits for next year. It’s during this time when workers find out what their premiums are as well as their co-payments and deductibles and whether there are any coverage changes.
Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called Trump's birth control decision "a landmark day for religious liberty.”
But employee health benefits experts don’t expect companies to end offers to workers for birth control without co-payments. It's considered a low cost preventive service that's cheaper than a baby delivery. Birth control pills, in particular, are largely available in cheaper generics and co-payments even before ACA became law were low.
In 2010, before the ACA was signed into law, nearly 9 in 10 employers covered contraceptives no matter company size , the benefits consultancy Mercer, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Co. said.
Inside Obamacare: The Fix For America’s Ailing Health Care System explores the ways the Affordable Care Act will impact your health care.
“In 2010 contraceptives were covered by 88% of respondents, with little variation in prevalence by employer size,” Mercer said in a report it issued in 2011. The findings in the report are based on Mercer’s survey of 779 employers in March of 2011 that included 157 employer respondents with fewer than 500 workers, more than 400 respondents with between 500 and 4,999 workers and 221 respondents with 5,000 or more employees.
